


And Nothing Else Behaves Like Me

by Helsabot



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helsabot/pseuds/Helsabot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos is not perfect by any estimation, and he doubts that anything in the universe can be. It works on a messy math, and though the golden ratio is beautiful, there are theories that suggest beauty could be reached through a more direct equation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Nothing Else Behaves Like Me

He realizes he is losing definition by day: He’s becoming more a generalization in a lab coat than the title he worked so hard towards in college. He’s beginning to say stuff like “science things” when Cecil asks what he’s doing, and what’s most fascinating of all is the fact that it doesn’t concern him.

“I’m not sure whether I’m adapting,” he says one night, distracted fingers in his hair, “or whether I’m being assimilated.”

“Uh huh,” Cecil mumbles into his neck.

“Cecil?”

“Uh huh?”

“Do you find me strange?”

Cecil stiffens in his arms. “ _Carlos_ ,” he says, pushing back and holding the object of his unwarranted affection at arm’s length. “Who said this? Was it _Steve_? Did _Steve Carlsberg_ say this? Oh, that _Steve_ , Night Vale will be hearing about this tomorrow, I’ll—”

“No, no, Cecil—no one said—I’m just… asking.”

Cecil blinks, indignation deflating. He suddenly looks very pained. “How could I _ever_?”

“I find you strange,” blurts Carlos. Because confessions, like stubborn band-aids, are best dealt with quickly.

Unexpectedly, Cecil grins. “Do you?”

“Well—yes. Does that—” Carlos frowns “—does that make you _happy_?”

“I’m happy just to be one of your conclusions.”

Carlos is not perfect by any estimation, and he doubts that anything in the universe can be. It works on a messy math, and though the golden ratio is beautiful, there are theories that suggest beauty could be reached through a more direct equation.

“There’s a theory that—”

“Oh?” Interrupts Cecil excitedly—he’s been _very_ into theories these days.

“—yes, that there’s more than one universe. Many, many universes. Infinite, perhaps. And that everything that could ever possibly be, is. Among all these realities are the words you didn’t say, the ones you could have said instead. The pause in the doorway when you thought you’d forgotten your keys. The left rather than the right. The soup instead of the salad.”

“Uh-huh?”

“But there are other things, too. It’s not just the road not taken. It’s that…” Carlos feels something sinking into place in his stomach. “It’s that the highly improbable is not only likely—it’s compulsory.”

Cecil sighs heavily, contented. He rubs his cheek into the cotton of Carlos’ t-shirt. “Most things are.”

“Not where I come from.”

And he’s trying to remember where he came from. Where there should be geography and his mother’s face, there is a smooth, black bar informing him of redaction. It is endless and does not reflect light, and the closer he creeps towards it, the louder it growls.

“I once tried to calculate the odds of someone loving me.”

“And?”

“It never occurred to me that I could be the variable.”

Cecil’s breathing evens gradually, his fingers curling in sleep. Carlos laces their hands together, and is only fleetingly surprised to find an absence of indentation where fingerprints should dwell.

There is no evidence to support the things Cecil does to him at night. And, for the first time, Carlos doesn’t feel the need to prove anything.


End file.
